‘The Idealist’: Aaron Swartz and copyright wars in the Internet age - The Boston Globe

"Aaron Swartz wasn’t cut out to be a criminal, a realization that came much too late. Swartz, Internet innovator and political activist, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment in January 2013. His death came two years after he’d been caught sneaking onto the data network of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and illegally downloading millions of academic research papers. It was a crime of principle. Swartz believed that scholarly papers should be freely available to the public. He believed it so strongly that he broke the law, thinking little of the consequences. After he discovered that those consequences would probably include a stint in federal prison, Swartz took his own life ..."